


Exhaustion

by OneShotWonder



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Gen, Hurt Dean Winchester, Hurt Sam Winchester
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-08-23
Updated: 2016-08-23
Packaged: 2018-08-10 14:33:25
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,486
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7848817
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/OneShotWonder/pseuds/OneShotWonder
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Coming back from hunting a couple of ghouls, the brothers take turns mending each other's wounds. Both of them hurt and exhausted, they take the time to fix each other up before falling asleep.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Exhaustion

They stumbled into the motel room in a _whoof,_ throwing open the door, completely careless about the noise they were making. Dean limped ungracefully to the bed and let out a sigh of relief when he sat down, placing his bag on the bed next to him. Sam stumbled in beside him; arm wrapped around his midsection and his face twisted with pain. Dean took quick look at both of them in large mirror on the opposite wall. They were in pretty poor shape, even for their own standards. Both of them sported matching pale skin and under eye circles dark enough to look like bruises, hair covered in drywall dust from the fight at the construction site. Dean quickly thought through both of their injuries and made a plan; he was used to the after-hunt triage, and knew before even sitting down how they would patch each other up. Sam had probably broken a rib that needed to be wrapped, glass pieces needed to be pulled out from his right forearm, and the bite mark on the right side of his neck had to be thoroughly cleaned.

The ghoul they were after wasn’t particularly hard to kill once they had found him, but they missed the signs that he had a partner and it took them by surprise, turning a simple shoot-for-the-head hunt, into a brawl that nearly took down the half-made house around them. The team of ghouls were strong and resourceful when they worked together and had put up a hell of a fight before succumbing to Dean’s pearl handled pistol.

Dean needed a dozen stitches for the long gash on his leg that had torn through his jeans all the way up his calf and still bled sluggishly onto his sock. He also sported a nasty bruise forming on his jaw and even though he couldn’t see it, he could feel a matching one behind his left shoulder blade, from when he was thrown through the drywall and into the pipes that lay inside. Sam took in shallow breaths, “What’s the plan?”

“Can you hold on long enough to stitch up this leg first? Then I can check out your ribs, clean out that bite on your neck and get the glass out of your arm.”

D hated having to be fixed up first, he always wished he could take Sam’s pain away as quick as possible, but he was steadily losing blood and the worse it got, the more tired he would inevitably become. He would like to be a tiny bit alert for the process of fixing up his brother.

“Yeah I can do it. Lay down.”

“How are the ribs? Broken?” Dean asked as he prepared the first aid kit and gingerly laid on his stomach on the cheap bedspread, leaning on elbows and lifting the mangled leg up so Sam could easily get at his calf. The bloody sheets of what was left of his jeans flapped to the side, exposing the long gash, courtesy of a not-so-near miss with a crowbar one of the ghouls had picked up. It could have been worse, if he didn’t pivot like he did, he would have had a lot less muscle left on his leg.

Sam kept and arm tight around his midsection and breathed shallowly but steadily as he knelt on the floor by the bed, careful not to jostle his midsection.

“I don’t think so, maybe just bruised.”

“I will check you out soon.” Dean replied and winced at the sting of hydrogen peroxide that was poured over his wound.

“Ah! Warning would have been nice!” He spat with no anger and he saw the corner of Sam’s mouth go up.

“No way, you always flinch if I give you a warning.” Dean sucked air through his teeth as his brother dabbed the liquid away with some gauze, preparing the gash for stitches.

“It’s a neat cut, this should be quick,” Sam informed him and he got to work threading the little curved needle. They went over the hunt as Sam stitched, mostly to distract themselves from the pain, but also to help them wind down; and most importantly, review how they had messed up so it wouldn’t happen again. In hind-sight it was clear to each of them that the ghoul must have had a partner, the bodies dropped too quickly for only one creature to be eating them and the pieces they found were always fairly spread out for a meal for one.

Sam would be sure to record everything in his own little journal once they had some time, pasting newspaper clippings and writing dates in the leather bound book, much like their fathers old one. Sam had always loved doing his homework and his records were precise and much more organized than the older hunter’s had been.

Once he was finished stitching he wrapped Dean’s leg tight and laid his arm down under the light of the night stand. Dean sat up with a groan and leaned down to inspect the damage. There wasn’t as much glass as he thought in his little brothers arm and he felt a little relived. He knew from experience that picking out all the small pieces could take hours, and the bone tired exhaustion that was creeping up on him told him he probably had about one more hour of being able to function before he dropped.

The hunt felt quick, only three days of real field work after they arrived in town. But the nights were spent breaking into the morgue, and hunting for the ghoul’s hideout, while the days required early mornings. First to impersonate some State Troopers, and then to interview families and do research. If he thought about it, and he really didn’t want to, neither one of them had slept 8 hours in all three days combined.

Dean went to work with the tweezers, picking the glass pieces out of his brother’s arm and placing them carefully on the night stand. Sam was patient; taking small sips of whisky from the bottle they kept in the first aid kit. Then Dean cleaned the wounds thoroughly and wrapped the whole arm to the wrist in gauze--better to be safe. He helped Sam to a sitting position on the bed, and carefully helped him remove the many layers of shirts to clean the mark on his neck and check out his ribs.

“First things first,” He said to the younger Winchester while holding up the peroxide with a weak grin that had no humor. Bites where always the worst to clean, you couldn’t be gentle because the chance of infection was so high. In fact, the bacteria had probably already invaded his system. Dean held a washcloth to Sam’s chest under the bite mark on his neck and poured the peroxide. He then scrubbed the wound lightly to get rid of loose bits of dead skin. Dean tried to ignore Sam’s whispered expletives while his thoughts wandered.

Ghouls ate people, like literally took pieces off and ate them, so it was no surprise how much flesh was missing from his brother’s neck; the monster must have died with a mouthful of Sam meat. The thought made the bile rise up in the back of Dean’s throat as he worked to clean out the wound and seal it with bandages and gauze. He then leaned over to prod the younger man’s ribs and with delicate hands inspected each one. Once he gave the hazy diagnosis of _probably not broken_ he helped his brother into the opposite bed and covered him up without a shirt on. It was still summer in the small Midwestern town and he wasn’t concerned about Sam getting cold in the night.

He had another quick thought and grabbed some penicillin from the kit and forced Sam to take the little pills with a generous cup full of water. Sam would have protested but the exhaustion caught up with him and he barely opened his eyes as he placed the empty cup on the night stand, falling into the heavy breathing of sleep almost instantly.

Dean took a few more swigs of the cheap whisky and prepared an ice pack for the back of his shoulder. He cracked the ice pack, one of the white plastic ones that had the chemicals inside, and slipped it into the sleeve of one of his long sleeve Henley shirts, tying knots on either side to keep it from slipping. He then tied it around his body and adjusted until he felt the cold on the most painful part of his shoulder. He finally turned off the light in the small room and lay down with a huff on top of the scratchy bedspread. He vaguely thought that he should have at least removed his bloodstained jeans before slipping into the dark, dreamless sleep of exhaustion.


End file.
